Watch this Royals free agent signee break an aluminum bat with a pitch
The Royals had quite a haul Sunday on the first day Major League Baseball teams could sign undrafted free agents.
MLB cut this year’s draft to five rounds from the usual 40 because of the coronavirus pandemic. That left a lot of players whose names would have been called on draft day searching for teams.
Or rather, teams went searching for them. And many of them signed with the Royals. Baseball America’s Ben Badler said of four the top five players in that publication’s rankings agreed to terms with the Royals.
That included Texas Tech right-hander John McMillon, per multiple reports. In seven relief appearances in the Red Raiders’ truncated 2020 season, McMillon struck out 20 in 9 1/3 innings pitched.
A year earlier, McMillon had 67 strikeouts in 47 2/3 innings of work. McMillon reaches triple-digits on the radar gun, and if you’re trying to get an idea of how hard he throws, there is this instance of him breaking a player’s bat.
Mind you, this is an aluminum bat that was sawed off at the handle (but not quite like a Ginsu knife of years ago). Twitter user Eric Kelly shared this a year ago:
But, much like those old Ginsu commercials, wait, there is more. McMillon also hit a home run off a scoreboard. This was an epic blast (again from Kelly):
This story was originally published June 16, 2020 at 10:19 AM.
